Big Jack walks the Ritz

Big Jack walks the Ritz

Randy Metcalf/The Explorer, Jack Nicklaus on Saturday plays a few holes at the Dove Mountain course he designed.

Big Jack walks the Ritz

Randy Metcalf/The Explorer, Golf legend Jack Nicklaus chips out of a sand trap as he played a few holes with his son during the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club's dedication event Saturday morning on Dove Mountain.

Above a murmur, Jack Nicklaus suddenly appeared on the podium at
the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club on Saturday, prepared to address the
media and an audience before the ceremonial dedication of his new
Jack Nicklaus Signature golf course.

“My gosh, we’ve got a pretty good crowd here this morning,” said
Nicklaus, who’d just walked part of the layout.

Behind The Golden Bear was a large, black and white photograph
of The Golden Bear, smashing a shot at a Philadelphia golf course
in 1964. Nicklaus was 24 then. In the photography, a boy gawked at
the shot. He is Mike McMahon, who is today the general manager at
the Ritz-Carlton Dove Mountain.

Nicklaus and the Ritz-Carlton’s principals are intertwined. The
golf legend designed the La Paloma golf course in the 1980s with
David Mehl, developer of the new complex on Dove Mountain, and
Mehl’s brother George. More than 20 years later, David Mehl and
Jack Nicklaus have worked together once more on Dove Mountain.

“Jack is not only the greatest golfer in the world, he’s just a
phenomenal designer,” said Mehl. “I’ve been able to witness, twice,
the artistry with which he approaches everything on the golf course
and the strategy and the significance and the importance of
everything that he lays out on any given golf hole.”

Creating a golf course for a community and for the PGA Tour –
this year’s World Golf Championships Accenture Match Play
tournament, for the first time – “is very special for me,” Nicklaus
said. “At least it was until I heard the commentators on
television.”

“Any time you do something as complicated as we did, you’re not
going to get everything right the first time,” Nicklaus said. “We
got it 95 percent right. We’ll adjust.”

Mehl’s objective, with partners Tim and Casey Bollinger, was “to
create the finest golf community we could in the desert. I’m very
proud of what we have built. It is a spectacular golf course,”
providing a golf experience “unmatched throughout the desert.”

“We can go out and create the same old thing, and I don’t think
that’s what you want,” Nicklaus said. “My main objective” was to
create “a golf course that was for you people, one that you could
enjoy, one you say is different.

“Golf was never meant to be a fair game,” Nicklaus said. “You
get good breaks, you get bad breaks. You get good bounces, you get
bad bounces.” His intention is “you might actually have to think a
little bit and play a shot.”

He spoke about Augusta, the scene of many triumphs, and the
mental challenge of Augusta National.

“I don’t want anybody playing on my golf courses if they don’t
want to think,” Nicklaus said. “I want you to think every shot. I
think that’s a fair thing to ask of the pros, too. I mean, they do
make their living at it.”

The greens are difficult, Nicklaus said, because “as far as
these guys hit the ball today,” greens are “the only defense of a
golf course any more.”

The PGA is asking for changes, and Nicklaus credited the
association for chipping in money to do so. He’ll continue to make
adjustments, to “tweak things, and try to make them better if I
can.” The course, and its greens, need time to mature, he
continued.

Nicklaus believes that, in “two or three years, I promise you,
this will be one of the favorite golf courses of the tour. I even
think some of your announcers will end up liking it.”